SF restaurants close, see reservations plummet due to APEC

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/sf-restaurants-reservations-apec-
18488745.php

This week’s APEC summit was supposed to flood San Francisco with 20,000
visitors ready to pump millions of dollars into the local economy. But so
far, the massive event is having a negative impact on the city’s fine
dining restaurants.

SFGATE spoke to five restaurants inside and outside the downtown closure
zones about what is shaping up to be not only a slow week, but also likely
a detrimental one – they’re worrying about staff commutes and a lack of
reservations, and have even had to cancel events and make plans to close
midweek.

At The Fly Trap, a legacy SoMa restaurant in the closure area,
reservations are down and locals have made their plans abundantly clear.

“Regulars from our neighborhood have already said that they are leaving
town entirely to avoid the conference,” general manager Jamee Stahl told
SFGATE. “We have some large parties that have reserved tables that I
expect are from the conference, and we’re hoping that being inside the
security zone will encourage attendees to visit us.”

That’s not the case at Benu, a three Michelin-starred restaurant that
opened in 2010 and is also inside the closure zone, at 22 Hawthorne St.
“We have fewer reservations than we can ever remember since opening,”
project director Jasmine Peterlin told SFGATE via email. Specifically,
Peterlin and Junyoung Jeong, a Benu chef and the restaurant’s coordinator
for APEC-related matters, estimate they’re down more than 50 percent.

“Obviously, our guests are concerned about access and traffic,” Peterlin
wrote. She said everyone at Benu recognizes what an honor it is for the
city to host a global event, but feel that the city’s organization and
communication were not commensurate with the scale of the event. “There
seems to be a misunderstanding of how businesses function and what we
need,” she added.

Jeong further elaborated that “customer-facing businesses like restaurants
that employ many people who can't work remotely need more time to plan”
than the two weeks they were given.

“The city is boasting how this will be a boon for local businesses
bringing 20,000 people to San Francisco. That's less than a Warriors
game,” he said. The negative impact on businesses, on the other hand, is
significant. “For us, the potential added business that a mere 20,000
people spread throughout the city can bring can't possibly offset the
added expense, loss of business from locals and overall headache of
operating in an area with restricted access.”

Abaca co-owners Francis and Dian Ang can relate. Their modern Filipino
restaurant is all the way in Fisherman’s Wharf – nowhere near the closure
zones – and yet they made the difficult decision to cancel a highly
anticipated event this Wednesday. They’re also closing the restaurant
completely that day, and on Thursday, too.

“We went into single-digit reservations when typically we’d have 100,”
chef Francis Ang said. “We called everybody and told the staff to stay
home.” Unless the trend reverses, Ang plans to operate with a skeleton
crew of five compared to his usual 17. And it feels eerily familiar.

“It’s like pandemic mode to survive,” he said. “What do we do to get the
least amount of loss? How do we minimize that loss to keep us surviving
the next few years?” One thing the Angs are doing is living by their motto
of “familia'' by offering their San Francisco home to a sous chef who
lives in the East Bay and was worried about his commute this week.

It’s a small gesture, but one that fosters goodwill during a difficult
time. After a slow summer and an even slower pandemic bounce-back, Ang
said San Francisco is still one of the most challenging places in the
country to run a restaurant.

Peter Hemsley is trying to be optimistic. The chef-owner of Aphotic, a
Michelin-starred destination restaurant near Moscone Center, said he is
really happy with the attention APEC is bringing to downtown San
Francisco. Reservations are stable, he said, and challenges can be
opportunities.

“The more high-profile events we have, the more it gets the federal
government into the city to see what’s going on here,” he said. “I don’t
think this event will be the gamechanger for downtown’s future
prosperity…But in the worst possible scenario, if it just goes OK I think
that’s a win.”


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